Tomb of Salahuddin Ayyubi just outside the Umayyad Masjid in Damascus, Syria
(photo courtesy Jema Smith-CC)
and as professed by such a man
as Saladin, is a religion of noble
simplicity and austere self-sacrifice…
no one was more assiduous
in the five prayers and weekly attendance
at the mosque; and even
when seriously ill, he would send
for the Imam and force himself to
stand and repeat the fatiguing
service of Friday. He delighted
in hearing the Koran read to
him, but his reader had to be a
practiced expert. Saladin would
listen till his heart melted and
the tears rolled down his cheeks.
He had this womanish weakness,
yet one likes him none the less for
his emotional, sensitive nature.
His heart was humble and full
of compassion, and tears came
readily to his eyes” (Life of Saladin,
pp. 225-226).
Despite his orientalist partialities,
Lane-Poole launches into unabashed
praise of Salahuddin Ayyubi:
His whole life was simple, laborious,
ascetic. When he was
shown a beautiful pavilion that
had been built for him at Damascus,
he scarcely glanced at it:
“We are not to stay here forever
sic,” he said, “This house is not
for one who looks for death. We
are here to serve God” (ibid, pp.
223-224).
The above portrait glorifies Salahuddin
Ayyubi as a gestalt.
Something to note
The above selection helps us broaden
our understanding of who our predecessors
were and what made them
‘saviors of the Islamic spirit’ to borrow
the term from Shaykh Maulana
Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi. Whatever they
accomplished in the deen is based on
their embodiment of both iman and
Islam.
We need to focus more on the bottom
line here: that the success of our pious
predecessors is owed to their being gestalts,
and their being gestalts is owed
to their embodying the two components
of iman and Islam. Their iman
component owes itself a great deal to
their tazkiyya, or attaining purification
of heart. The severe indifference and
even denunciation of this concept today
has created a dearth in the number
of gestalts this Umma has produced
in the last century. The new crop of
scholarship cultivated by modern society
have been completely divested of
that Islamic spirit because of their indifference
to this field of Islam, which
was one of the four main parts of the
prophetic mission. Allah says, “Send
among them a messenger from themselves
who will recite to them Your
verses and teach them the Book and
wisdom and purify them” (2:129).
Without imbibing this essential component,
we would not be seeing the
likes of Imam Abu Hanifa, Abdullah
ibn Mubarak, Imam Malik, Ibn al-
Jauzi ibn Taymiyya, and Salahuddin
Ayyubi and the many, many more
mujaddids of each century who have
preserved and passed on the Islamic
spirit in their respective fields.
Because without the parts, there is no
sum, and without the sum, there is no
gestalt.
12 January – February 2022 | AL-MADINAH